Frederick II and his castles: the Castle of Bari

We are in Bari, in the periphery of its historical centre, where there's the castle. You're not aware of its
presence until, going out from the street that runs along the Palace of
Justice, you find it in front of you with its spare-shaped bastion framed by
the trees that decorate the boulevard next to its walls. During the period at
the university, I never stopped to appreciate properly how this image was
majestic and made me open my eyes wide, leaving me speechless.

As some of the other castles seen
previously, also this one was born on the ruins of a Norman castle and withstood some changes with the succession of
centuries and sovereigns. The bastion I was talking before, for example, is the
result of the changes made in the XVI century in order to defend in a better
way the castle on the land side from possible canons and other fire guns attacks,
exactly the same principle that we already met in the castles of Barletta and
Trani.

In the moment in which, getting closer, you
have a global vision of the castle, you have the feeling that the walls and the
bastions at the corners function as a shield to the main and central core of
the fortress, that is to say Frederick's keep, considered nowadays, as in the
past either, the jewel of the whole structure. It's clear the difference
between the style of the defensive walls in front of me and that one of the
high towers, characterized by the stonework, the pointed windows and the
oculuses, that I've learnt to recognise as Frederick's typical elements.

I cross the bridge over the moat and enter the spaces where there's the
ticket office. I get ready to enter the keep. According to a legend, this
castle also hosted Saint Francis from Assisi and right Frederick II tested the
moral strength of the man tempting him with a woman, but with no success.

It doesn't matter how hot it is, it doesn't matter how blinding
the sun is, you can't avoid to admire with your mouth open the work of art that
the pointed portal is, masterly
decorated. I always get surprise of how
these sculptures have arrived to us after so many centuries and events. These
are the architectural elements I love the most: they always give me the
impression to be in front of something mysterious and far in time, almost
magic. They're those shapes that you usually expect to find in fantasy and
Arabic settings, in legends populated by different mythological creatures.
Then, you cross the portal and feel like a medieval lady as you walk through
the vestibule and just after the loggia
with their decorated columns with detailed capitals. Here the Orient really put
in something of itself, as among the
sculptors there was the Oriental Ismael
too, who signed his capital, that one on the left.

Beyond the loggia, here I am in the inner
court. Once it was adorned with palm trees, but the feared red palm weevel made
a disaster of them, unfortunately. In a room on the right, the first at hand
just entered, there is a video in which it's told the history of the castle and
as a guide there’s none other than our
Frederick! Obviously is an ad hoc idea that may say nothing to someone, but
that makes you smile when you've gone around in castles right on his
footprints. In this room I find something
familiar: an emblem representing a
lion eating its tail, the emblem of Pappacodas. I' m surprise at the sight of
the crest of the lords of Massafra, my town, and wonder for what unknown reason it's there. What relationship was
there? The answer comes from Frederick himself from the video: this family had
relationships with the queen of Poland, Bona Sforza, the daughter of Isabella
of Aragon and an important character for Bari. Ended the video, it may be
instinctive to exit the room and to continue the visit. No instead! Beneath
this castle there's a treasure, the
ruins of a previous building of the Byzantine period. Going in the back of the
room and going downstairs, it's possible to see the archaeological site that
shows a tank for the harvesting of rainwater
and a furnace where they cooked clay for the production of tools.

Now I can go back in the court. From here
you can access to a little church, to the rooms that host the cast museum, to
the Swabian Hall and you can see a double staircase that brings to the upper
floor, now closed because there are restoration works. But at Frederick's time,
this staircase had just a medieval ramp.
Bona Sforza wanted the current structure, following the standards of Renaissance. On the cornice,
in Latin, you can read an inscription that proves these interventions.

It's a beautiful court, I'd go around and
analyse it in detail if only the sun now so hot and blinding on the clear stone
didn't make necessary to find a covered place, immediately.

So I enter the cast museum. Here there are the gypsum casts of some of the most
beautiful sculptural elements of Apulia. Yes, they're full-size copies, but the
nice thing of this place is that you've the possibility to see from close
distance some sculptures that usually you see from far distance, such as capitals on columns, or
the elephants that adorn the Cathedral of Bari, or Eraclio's head, the Colossus
of Barletta, or the sphinx on the portal of Saint Nicholas Basilica.

After the rooms of the cast museum I find
myself in front of another
archaeological site. Do you remember that in the first room there was an
archaeological site of the Byzantine period? Here there is another one: a
church, with even graves and its original floor. Above there is the Swabian Hall. Inside there are crockery
from the period of Isabella of Aragon and Bona Sforza, where they also found
even some left-overs, the models of the castle of Bari, Barletta and Monopoli
and an interesting photo exhibition that
explains how the structure of the castle has been changed during the
years, how it was treated badly, so to speak, during Napoleonic period, how it
was used as a jail in the XIX century,
it reminds a beautiful Italian garden that enhanced the moat before opting for
an anonymous English lawn, which has a hard time in Apulian weather conditions, and
restoration works to bring the fortress back to the splendour that it deserves.
Once finished, the castle should become a big exhibition space like nothing
else in Apulia.

GOOD TO
KNOW

An important and useful thing to know is
that the castle has been made accessible
for the disabled with noteworthy attention. The structure has not only
ramps, but also lifts wisely installed to make all the environments usable and
apparently non invasive to the eye of the visitor. But that's not all.

The structure is getting equipped to give
the possibility to appreciate the works of the cast museum also to blind people with casts realised
specifically and captions in Braille alphabet. An added value that I couldn't
put in evidence.

Ticket
price: 3 euros

Opening
hours: every day from 8.30 am to 7 pm

Closing
day: Wednesday

And with this our itinerary to the discovery
of the castles of Frederick II comes to an end. Along this tour I've discovered
an educated man in Castel del Monte, a pride strategist in Barletta, an emperor
in Trani and a lover in Gioia del Colle. I've enjoyed myself a lot making this
project, I've learnt a lot about history, about architecture, about the history
of art, and I've got surprised of how the different buildings could represent
different aspects of this person so important for the world and for my region.